"See, hear, and am silent."

My name is Rahul Singh, and I am a living creature that died yesterday. Sounds perplexing, right? However confusing the statement may read, no doubting its truth, or half-truth. I died in my dream, and the experience left me with an impression that's going to outlast time itself.

It was dusk-time, and I stood in an unknown place. Interestingly, I was dressed in a Suit, and seemed more like a body builder. I allowed myself to sit on a bench underneath a tree in a garden, which looked like it had been isolated for long. 

Lost in deep thinking, I realized something was really weird. Problems with dreams are that there ain't enough emphasis on details. My mind felt perplexed 'bout the situation. I didn't need breathing, I couldn't feel my pulses, and whatever I did, I didn't seem to get injured. My vision seemed supernatural, I could even clearly see the ant that moved good 10 meters away from me.

I hate giving up on things I love, but everything here indicated that I wasn't human anymore. It was enough a reason to cry, but I couldn't, even jabbing my eyes with my fingers didn't help. I felt sad, and that was contradicting the situation as I never knew if dead people had feelings, and also the place seemed alien. I never had been there before.

I started walking from the place towards an unknown destination, and hours into the walk, there wasn't a part of me that felt tired. I kept walking through the night, and nothing changed for me. I realized I had lost life, and change was out of my curriculum.

Now, the question arose - where am I? After death, my granny had told me that we either went to heaven or to hell. The place being so desolated initially gave an impression of it being heaven, but later during the day I reached a place with concrete buildings, and all of the human-made machinery and other stuff. That meant builders, engineers had reached the place too, and I could see political hoardings and banners. I thought to myself - Okay, this must be hell.

All the voices of the cars and the people, I had been used to, when alive had added impressions of unknown voices that I wasn't used too, and that was annoying. Nobody seemed to notice me, and another hour I could see people quarreling over petty stuff, I could hear venomous stuff that some lads/lasses I passed by thought (not necessarily said, but I still could hear). I even saw blood, and misery.

I quickly moved on to a place of solitude, what was an isolated beach. I could still hear voices in my head, the voices which told of great misery. I reckoned that my heart wasn't breathing, but my learning hadn't ended. Somewhere, some puzzling queries of afterlife seemed answered, but many more confusions arose. I felt terrible at the thought of dying every moment, even after death. Then, I heard some soothing voices coming from behind. I needn't turn to find kids playing in the sand. Yet, not enough to make me feel alive, and more what I had eternity to live through, dead.

"All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent."

This is how Walt Whitman ends his poetry "I Sit and Look Out" resembling the struggle of 19th century. Unfortunately, things have only got worse since.

The dream ended with a stupid phone call, and being so helpless in it, ached my heart, but what I felt worse was that maybe, maybe reality isn't too different.

This is a work of fiction brought to you by a "cool kid born in a hot month". I also have a blog called Good Little Indian.

I know I do a lot of self-promotion, but my favourite line is, "Such is the world and it's creatures."

Smile to Save the World. It can't hurt.

Life is madness, and anger and incivility are about the nicest things a person will see these days. Go shopping and it becomes a game of dodging speeding shopping carts, and moving stealthily past hostile customers, and bitter, aggressive employees. Almost an arcade style movement and avoidance game. Christmas cheer fills the air.

Turn on the TV, heart breaking tragedy, and loss. Which inspires vitriolic, stump climbing presidential hopefuls to swing their purses vengefully at each other. Where have the great orators of the past gone. Why is there no message of hope.

Would it hurt to hear one person with a microphone and a television camera say "things are not going well, but working together we can overcome the hate, and the fear. We can learn to live together."

I have lived a long time, and it seems like things have not gotten noticeably worse, only different, and more televised. And the people who can blame, and find fault are the most rewarded with the trophy of attention from the news outlets.

+Trina Emmerson and I have decided to start a movement. Smile To Save the World. So far she has done most of the work, (thank you, Trina) and probably most of the smiling. She provided this wonderful picture.  I am going to try to catch up. #smiletosavetheworld.



I am going to try to do a nice thing for somebody every day. And I may try more than one. There are plenty of ideas on this website. In fact a quick search provides hundreds of sites like this.

And, when I hear about someone doing something nice I am going to write a blog post about it. If you hear about something let, or Trina know and we will make sure it gets mentioned.

Please join us, Smile, be polite and Save the World.

Yes, it is probably futile, and a waste of time, but it can't hurt. And nobody else seems to be trying anything.

Thank you,

The Smile To Save the World foundation.

We are only human, some of us, after all.

People often send in resumes, asking for unpaid internships, offering bribes and kickbacks, anything to get their foot in the door at Life Explained.  After all, this is a hard working group of dedicated servants of the planet, who want nothing but an improved quality of life for the residents of Earth, and not just the people, either, plants, animals, insects, we care for them all.  True, we are not all that fond of spiders, or snakes, or giant, mucous covered snails.  But, we want them to be happy, and healthy, just not around here, then we can be happy, as well.  That is why it is troubling and brings much us much sadness to report that even we are not immune to the scandals that are buffeting the nation.

Recently, we developed a small unmanned aerial vehicle to fly stealthily around the Life Explained campus finding the true stars, those who go above and beyond to make things better, the heroes who sacrifice selflessly, giving their all in a valiant effort to improve everything, for everybody.  It was only an effort to recognize those toiling, sweating, bleeding, willing to give their all in An Effort to Make Everything Better for Everybody All of the Time.  Our new company motto, by the way.  Unfortunately, Occasionally Reality Stomps Good Intentions Into The Ground. Our old motto, it is easy to see why we needed a change.
Since we are so comfortable with technology (we are bloggers, after all) we outfitted our drone with  thermal and video cameras, radar avoiding composites, an array of aroma detection sensors (in case anyone brings in fresh donuts) and some light weaponry, nothing lethal, just fun stuff, you know?  This would be a good time to apologize to the people in the hallway, on the 7th floor of building E in front of the elevator at 9:33 this morning.  We are very sorry, but, you did look funny, running, screaming and  waving your arms, it looked like you were being chased by a swarm of bees.  You will be able to see it on YouTube as soon as we clear it with the lawyers, and as soon as Bob from Human Resources gets out of the hospital, we had no way of knowing about the hernia surgery.  Sorry Bob, it was all in good fun, we are sending over a form, nothing important, please sign it and send it back, right away.

It was a terrible surprise when we caught one of our own, laying down on the job.  Dr. Dawg, was supposed to be researching important methods of combating lethargy.  It seems he lost the battle.
We are very sorry to say, in light of this terrible breach of protocol, complete disregard for rules, and workplace ethics, and dereliction of responsibility, we had to dismiss Dr. Dawg.  Sent him packing, all dues paid,  good bye, good luck, and God bless you.

Oh, heck, we can't fire Dr. Dawg.  For one thing he is the designated driver, the majority share holder, and the short stop on the soft ball team.  Plus, he throws the best parties, last year at his birthday bash Three Dog Night performed songs by the Stray Cats.  Man, that guy kills us!